Month: November 2012

And just like that the contest is over. We can all wake tomorrow knowing that most of the moustaches we see today will be replaced by freshly shaven faces. This may or may not be a good thing, depending on the individual sporting said ‘stache and your own personal facial hair preferences. Anyway, after some…

Holy hell it’s already the 29th. That means we have one day remaining in Movember – the month where those who have the follicular ability sprout whiskers of awesomeness in support of men’s cancer research. Since I am what one might call follicularly challenged, I have once again opted to support my Mo-bros by holding…

And just like that the semester is over. Okay, maybe not completely over but pretty much over. The students still have to write their exam, and I have to grade said exam, but otherwise everything that the students needed to do, they have done. Today was their final lab demo. That is, today they put everything on…

So apparently today was the last formal day of class – well, at least for the course I teach. Tomorrow is the last day I will meet with my students this semester in a non-exam setting. Crazy. I honestly can’t believe how fast the semester has gone. It seems like only yesterday that I was…

Every now and then I have a moment where I’m on. You know those moments. We all have them. We’re in a situation where we need to know something quickly, and for whatever reason – sufficient sleep, hard work, solid nutrition, hydration, planets aligning with stars, ascending moons, green clovers, blue diamonds, purple horseshoes, whatever…

As part of my training for the Goofy Race in January, today was my long run. While it wasn’t the longest run I’ve ever completed (44.2 km1), it was my longest run this month (16.1 km2). To put this into context, the longest distance that I had completed this month prior to today’s run was 12.14…

So it’s November 24th, which means that Christmas eve is but 30 days away. For whatever reason my mind hadn’t completely accepted this fact. I didn’t particularly feel any Christmas spirit despite having several Christmas parties already penciled into my calendar. Braving the malls over the past few weekends1 also didn’t seem to help. Perhaps…

A few short hours from now will mark the 1 year anniversary marking the moment when my mom called to inform me that my older brother Bernie had been in a car accident. While information would be scarce, I’d soon learn that he had been rushed from the Norfolk General Hospital in Simcoe, to Hamilton…

Holy hell the semester is almost over. On one side of the coin I’m stoked because it has been a long semester filled with late nights, early mornings, sleep deprivation, and probably far too much coffee and beer. On the other side of the coin I’m a bit sad because, while the semester has been…

Do you know what’s awesome? Spending over 12 hours on campus, running around from meeting to meeting, sitting for hours reading papers about multinomial regression and other statistical bric-a-brac, drafting potential mathematical formulae, scrapping reams and reams of paper with discarded mathematical attempts, sketching ideas over top of other ideas on a tiny whiteboard, consuming far…

The other day while1 …walking to the mall or walking to campus or walking on campus or walking downtown Guelph or walking pretty much anywhere… I couldn’t help but notice something. That something – cigarette butts. Everywhere I looked. Cigarette butts thrown, flicked, and smashed into the ground and discarded as if doing so were as natural as breathing. Why is…

Last night before I turned off the lights, before I pulled up the covers to protect me from whatever monsters might lurk under my bed or in my closets, and before the wee fuzzball snuggled up next to me, I checked my calendar so that I might set my alarm at an appropriate get-out-of-bed time….

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, I spent my eve at what I thought might have been the first Christmas party of the season. It was, in fact, not a Christmas party. It was, however, a party to celebrate my friend Patrick’s recent completion of an intense body building challenge. That challenge transformed him from…

A short and sweet post, as I’m off to a party. This may or may by be the first Christmas party of the season – I’m not sure. I am sure that I’m not quite ready for Christmas. Anyway, today was a another awesome day – this time spent with friends as we wandered the…

Apart from a few meetings, I spent the bulk of my day working through what I assumed should be a simple mathematical problem. For whatever reason, and despite my best efforts, my brain just didn’t want to process or comprehend it. I spent hours staring at it, trying to approach it from different angles – but…